Where to Watch the Oscars Online and on iOS Devices

Oscar night! A night of glamour, great moments in film and gripes that your favorite films were overlooked. Also, it’s just another occasion to observe how technology has changed the awards show experience.

First things first: The ceremony broadcast is exclusive to ABC, so if you want to watch the entire show and you don’t have a TV, you might have to wait for illicit clips to be uploaded to YouTube. However, if you do have a TV but don’t have cable, a digital antenna for your television will solve that problem.

There will be plenty of material available online, however, especially if you’re more interested in gowns than acceptance speeches. Livestream.com and the AP are partnering for their own live streaming coverage of the red carpet, and plenty of other organizations will be on the carpet as well as backstage, including MTV and PopSugar.

And Oscar.com will also be live streaming — according to a spokesperson, “Oscar.com will be live streaming content from the awards throughout the evening — from the Red Carpet through the ceremony — which will be in addition to the content airing on television. So fans can actually log on to Oscar.com at any point during the night and see content from the awards show.”

However, for the premium experience, Oscar fans can subscribe to the Oscar All-Access web experience; for $4.99, they can access multiple live camera feeds on the red carpet and in the Kodak theater during the show, along with other extra content. In addition, the Oscar Backstage app for iOS devices features all the same content as the All-Access package — except for the “360 cam” — and costs $0.99.

I’m still not sure that monetizing the two-screen experience is a good idea, but while the Oscar.com spokesperson says that “both the Backstage app and Oscar All Access are designed to be a companion to the TV broadcast and offer insider access to enhance the experience as opposed to replacing it,” it’s still possible that someone not watching the broadcast would still be able to follow the action on stage.

And hey, if you want to get truly low fi, just follow the #oscars hashtag on Twitter. Not only will you be able to get up-to-the-second updates on who just won what, but live commentary on the night’s best and worst moments as well.